The Count brought up the issue of stats in his blog.To get to a point where stats mean more to us, first we need to better define them. If the current nomenclature were a type of defense, it would be the Cupasaurus -- not entirely useless, but ignoring too much of what's happening on the field and (in highly technical terms) really sucky.
For defense, the "D" stat is just too generic. In football, there are sacks, hurries, knockdowns, interceptions, tackles, etc. We don't need that level of granularity in Ultimate, but we can all see the difference between a point block and an interception when it happens, just not when we read "D" on the stat sheet.
For offense, here's something I wrote 2 years ago:
Yeah, two years ago I wrote that! And the UPA has yet to address my concern. Sometimes I get the feeling they don't even read my blog.The thing about goals being scored is that the thrower often actually deserves more of the credit than the receiver. And further, the deserved credit to the thrower is directly proportional to the distance from which the goal was thrown. The term assist suggests they didn't have as much involvement in the play as is reality.
And as a pre-emptive strike, this is entirely unrelated to any debate on being a team player and who cares who gets the credit. It's about being able to understandably and accurately record the events of the game.
Typically, people are recording stats in an effort to determine who is making the most valuable contributions to the team and conversely who's hurting it. In that regard, I think there are 3 (positive contribution) offensive stats that are important:
TG - thrown goal
TG and RG are obvious. The assist is the throw that provides an excellent opportunity to the new thrower for a TG (e.g. the 55 yard throw to within 5 yards of the goal, the 15 yard crossfield swing to the break side of the field, etc.). The current use of the "assist" stat is both inconsistent with current sports stats and doesn't make sense semantically -- since the player didn't just "assist" in the goal, but had a direct contribution in creating it. The throw prior to a TG, however, very often contributes to creating ideal conditions in which a TG can occur and makes sense semantically to be referred to as an assist. This throw has historically gotten way too little credit.
RG - received goal
A - assist
4 comments:
We used to call them Goals Thrown (GT) and Goals Caught (GC), back in 1990.
In general, it's an issue as to how to apportion credit to the receiver, thrower, and anyone who may have set up that pass (in addition to a huck that leads to a next pass goal, what about break passes that set up almost guaranteed continuations?). Even in your example, I wouldn't necessarily give more credit to the thrower on a huck, since the receiver has to get open first, and sometimes makes a great saving catch on a poor throw.
Some teams do record assists (or 2nd assists in the other nomenclature), although I don't know if they automatically credit it or if they use their judgment (a guy who catches an in-bounds pull and feeds it to another who hucks the length probably doesn't deserve an assist).
Not sure that the UPA needs your input. You are after all the cheater.
Stats shouldn't get bogged done by the quality or importance of a throw. Stats are supposed to be quantifiable, easy-to-measure. Sometimes the assist to the thrower is most valuable, sometimes the throw resulting in the goal is and sometimes the catch is spectacular. There's no way to distinguish importance or difficulty (i.e. a one-handed toe the line touchdown still only counts as a touchdown in the books).
It's often cited by the sports media: sometimes stats can't measure the importance of a player's "intangibles" (I really hate that word).
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